Mr Blair could and should postpone the election

'The Government is still almost certain to win, and win big. And who knows? Virtue may be rewarded'

The ironies scarcely need spelling out. A government confronts a force of nature that threatens to wrest from it, as none of its numerous human enemies have managed to, its awesome ability to control political circumstances.

The ironies scarcely need spelling out. A government confronts a force of nature that threatens to wrest from it, as none of its numerous human enemies have managed to, its awesome ability to control political circumstances.

Yesterday's unemployment figures merely add one more brushstroke to the irresistibly benign canvas Labour intends to exhibit to the nation on 3 May. Despite stock-market turbulence yesterday, Gordon Brown's budget, in economic circumstances as good as they are likely to get, has left the City squared and the middle classes all prepared. And best of all, the Tories are on the floor, their leader entitled to believe that for him, virtually any other conditions would be better than these.

This hitherto cloudless sky is now dark with the smoke from burning carcasses. An utterly unpredictable outbreak of foot-and-mouth has not taken the hoped-for course. Even a week or so ago, there were grounds for believing that by now it would have been possible to pronounce the crisis over, because it could be shown that all incidences of the disease had preceded the ban on livestock movements imposed by a vigilant Minister of Agriculture. But because of the sheer proliferation of cases, that judgement cannot now be safely made.

A 3 May election might therefore be taking place in a atmosphere of continued rural crisis. Even if every elector whose movements are restricted and wants to vote could do so by post, as the Government yesterday insisted, participation in those elections could yet be abnormally curbed in some areas. One small party, UKIP is considering whether it might even have a case under the electoral provisions of the Human Rights Act to stop the campaign going ahead. No doubt the courts will be deeply reluctant to become involved, But UKIP isn't alone in complaining.

More menacingly for the Government, the National Farmers' Union has sounded the alarm, pointedly calling on the Prime Minister to weigh heavily the dangers of an election if the crisis does not abate, not least the prospect that some of its members may be unable to play a full part in the campaign. A clutch of prominent council leaders, Labour as well as Tory, are urging him to postpone the local elections.

It's understandable that the Government is increasingly vexed at all this. This isn't, for a start, a town (Labour) versus country (Tory) issue. Indeed detailed MORI polling in the 180 rural or semi-rural seats held by Labour has shown that at two points during the parliament - the second quarter of 1999, and during the fuel crisis last September - the rural Labour vote held up better than the national one - in the latter case, an 8-per-cent lead when nationally the two main parties were neck and neck.

Put crudely, the minimum wage probably matters more than the disparate complaints of the Countryside Alliance in rural areas. There is every sign, moreover, that this lead is holding up well - not least because of general approval of the Government's handling of the crisis, underlined by the bipartisan exchanges in the Commons yesterday.

There is nevertheless no doubt about why Labour wants the election on 3 May - because it is prepared for it and has the best chance of maximising its majority, rural and urban. It is now beginning to dawn on it that it needs a story to explain how this might be in the national interest as well as its own.

And here it is struggling. One argument in essence is that if the local elections, also planned for 3 May, are possible, then so is the General Election. And to postpone the local elections - for which legislation would almost certainly have to be introduced by the Home Office before 26 March - would be a very big step. Other than during local government reorganisation, it has only been taken once, in a measure introduced at the beginning of World War II and renewed annually until 1944. So big a step that according to the Prime Minister's spokesman, some in the tourist industry argue that it could lead potential visitors to think the crisis greater than it is, thus creating more economic damage.

Perhaps. But this misses a point which concerns an even more precious commodity than that: respect for democracy itself. It may well be that if the crisis is seen to have peaked over the next 10 days, the Government can, and probably should, take the risk of going ahead. But if it hasn't, it may pay and deserve to pay a heavy price if it sticks to its timetable. The awkward but sacred process of elections can't be approximated, as the US discovered in the gruesome aftermath of the Presidential contest.

Ministers are no doubt right to point out that the countryside is anything but the post-nuclear war-zone it has been depicted as in some quarters, and that heavy restrictions are confined to very few areas. But so were the contested precincts in Florida last year. It may be true, too, that every single elector can be guaranteed a postal vote, even if it means narrowing still further - from the current six days - the pre-election deadline by which they have to be submitted. And even if it means helicopter drops of election literature and ballot forms in the most isolated quarantined farms. But even if this not entirely certain proposition was correct, electoral rights are not confined to the right to vote. My right to drive you to the polling station, or attend a meeting, or heckle a candidate, or join his canvassing team, matters too. And it matters more rather than less when we are worried about the low levels of participation and interest in party politics.

You can see that ministers would feel this horribly unfair. They know that the Daily Mail, when it calls for postponement, is acting as a surrogate for a Tory party which dare not say it doesn't want the earliest of all possible elections. It will be especially painful for Labour to see its masterplan laid waste if it turns out that most of the blame accrues to a couple of greedy livestock dealers who care nothing for farming but everything for the profit they can make by buying animals at one end of the country and selling them at another.

But this government might be especially vulnerable if it defiantly went ahead with the election in the midst of a still raging outbreak. It could be seen as subordinating the claims of what may yet prove to be a national emergency to the interests of a party. And it could add to an already latent impression that New Labour too often confuses its own party political interests with those of the country.

As it happens, and despite the Government's currently bullish tone, the Prime Minister will surely think very carefully about all this before he decides against legislating to postpone the local elections, the first essential step towards a June - or just possibly an Autumn general election. After all, if it keeps its nerve, the Government is still almost certain to win, and probably win big. Provided the foot-and-mouth crisis is still building, it will be the right course. And who knows? Virtue may be rewarded. For the Government will have shown that it has taken a modest risk to ensure democracy is as perfect as it can be.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk